11-30-15

Well first I would like to address those of you that sent me an email this last week asking me what on earth is going on and why I was flying home.... I am NOT leaving Denmark. Ethan is the one flying out TO his mission (love ya bro). Apparently my Father thought it would be funny to mix up our email templates and send Ethan's email under my name. 

So to answer all questions: No. I will NOT be home for Christmas. Only in my dreams.

But speaking of Christmas, great things are happening in Århus around Christmas time! A new initiative just came out from the church with a new video that we can easily share with people to spread the Christmas spirit! It's a great tool. We have also seen LOTS of attention from the ward recently! They've all been quarreling over who gets to have us over for Christmas, so that means a ton of eating appointments :) Bring on the fleskersteg and brunkartoffler and rødkål!! 

Thanksgiving day was lots of fun. We had zone conference and waaaaay too much turkey. But President and Sister O'Bryant gave a great training about gratitude and it really struck me. I feel like I need to be more grateful towards God. Just imagine for a moment that when you wake up tomorrow morning, ALL that you would have would be the things which you had thanked God for the night before, and everything that you forgot to thank Him for would be gone. You probably wouldn't have very much left. I know it's a little drastic, but it illustrates how much God has given us. EVERYTHING we have comes from Him who wants to give in even more abundance. He truly does love us. 

I was in a city called Frederikshavn on Tuesday and we saw miracle after miracle after miracle. My favorite one for the day was the fact that we had received this referral from church headquarters the day before for a young man named *S*. We had his address, so we biked out 21 kilometers in the rain to get to his house. When we knocked on the door of this Danish cottage in the middle of thick woods, a woman answered. We asked if Søren lives here. She said ''ja, det plejer han at gøre...'' which means ''yes, he usually does...'' Apparently, *S* was currently living at a place called 'Brigham Young University' to study and had met Mormons. After he got to know what it was all about, he quickly hopped online and requested that missionaries be sent to his home address in Denmark!! His Mum was a little confused to see us at first, but quickly opened up!! We will now be coming back to teach the mother and children next week!!! God is a God of miracles!

I hope you are all staying nice and warm! Have a great week! Love you all!

Ældste Jed Bradshaw

11-23-15

Hey,

Don't have much time this week, so I'm sorry to say that this will be a short email :(

Things are going great and I'm feeling wonderful! We had a MASSIVE snow storm yesterday so we were just shoveling snow for the most of church so that people wouldn't get stuck in the building.

Otherwise, Elder Vance and I have been traveling lots as always :) We were in Copenhagen just a few days ago when there was a bomb threat on the trains and at the nearby airport. This world is crazy!! I love my mission!!

We find out about transfers on Thursday, so that should be exciting! Looks like I'm due to move which is quite a bummer, but it's alright. A new chapter in the mission.

I'm happy and optimistic, loving the winter weather and looking forward to Christmas (all of the decorations have been up for a while now).

Have a fantastic week!! I love you all!!

Ældste Jed Bradshaw 

y

11-16-15

Hello!!

God Mandag alle sammen!! It is getting CHILLY in Århus, but that can't keep our spirits down!! We've had such an awesome week with splits on the other side of the country to 6 hour zone trainings and everything in between! 

Zone training this week was all about family history work and how we can use it as a finding tool in our mission. There is tons of potential here with the people of Denmark because they LOVE their families and they have such a good system set up that makes it so easy for them to find their ancestors! 

Oh guess what?!? A couple of weeks ago when I was on splits here in Århus we contacted this lady on a bridge. She turned out to be a school teacher that was looking for someone to come and give a presentation to her students as they were beginning to study world religions!! Well this last week we finally made it out to her class!! She called them the class of ''misfit children'' as they were all struggling students of some sort. They had tons of questions for us and we just chatted openly for about two entire hours! By the end we had handed out several copies of the Book of Mormon and they had given us lots of hot dogs in return. It was awesome. Then as the teacher escorted us out of the building she took us to the principal and introduced us to him. He was so impressed by what we do that he insisted that we come back and present to more of his classes! Awesome!

We've had some exciting progress with our investigators, especially one man named *S*. He's *F's* best friend and this last Friday he invited us over to cook us some traditional Ghanaian food. It was delicious and after we ate we had the chance to share the message of the Gospel with him. He is now on date to be baptized on the 19th of December! He's such a great guy. 

Well I hope you all have a wonderful week!! I love you all!!!

Elder Bradshaw  

11-9-15

Howdy Y'all,

Happy Monday!! I hope you are all healthy and happy! I certainly am! We just kick started our Monday with a great 5 mile run with our investigators Mr. T (the Colombian) and his wife *S* (the Dane)! Elder Vance and I have become avid runners actually. We were in Copenhagen this week for our Mission Leadership Council and we spent the night at President O'Bryant's house so we decided to invite him to go running with us in the morning. Of course he couldn't say no! You should have seen it... ha ha it was hilarious. President was the only one with a headlamp on (it was pitch black) and we went running through a thick forest so Elder Vance and I had to stay as close to President as possible in order to see where we were going!

Sunday was a great day this week. Mr. T showed up for the closing hymn of sacrament meeting but was able to attend guest class and priesthood meeting with us translating along the way. We've been encouraging the ward to invite their friends to church recently, and this Sunday, two of them brought people! One brought her boyfriend who really wants to come again and the other brought her best friend from Ghana!! It's so great when the members get involved in the work. It gets everyone more excited and it keeps the missionaries happy.

We've been trying to visit a member a day recently and we've really seen the trust between members and missionaries grow. They are inviting us over to their place more often to eat with their families, which is awesome! Especially this one family, the *T-Ns*, who have really taken a liking to us. And I don't know how, but the father *F* found a Hollow Bodies ad online some place and looked up everything about us. He then pranked me this last weekend by blasting one of our songs that he found on the internet right after we had blessed the food. He thought it was hilarious. I didn't. Good one *F*. Good one.

Oh a crazy thing happened this week!! As we were on our way to Copenhagen, standing in a packed train like canned sardines when *J* from Hillerød (my first area) ran up to me and tried to give me a big hug!! Ha ha I didn't know what to do! We had the Sister Training leaders with us and everything, so I kinda just stood there as she hugged my stone body. At first she reprimanded me for not talking to her after I left the area, so after I explained that I couldn't she told me some great news!! Apparently *M*, a man we found and spent months teaching in Hillerød, got baptized!! So that was a neat tender mercy for the day. 

This week has been a great testimony for me about the blessings that have to come to each and every one of us because of the restoration of Christ's Gospel to the earth. Just think how much it changes the way you and I live our lives every single day! It's beautiful. I know without a doubt that Joseph Smith was called in his imperfections to bring to pass a perfect and marvelous thing. 

But I hope you all have a great week!!! I love you ALL!!    

Ældste Bradshaw

11-2-15

Happy November everyone!!!

Holy cow how is it already November? It's been such a great week here! Just go go go every second of every day. It's mostly been crazy because of the fact that we hosted a MASSIVE family history event here in the Århus church building. It's the largest family history gathering in all of Denmark and is run completely by members and missionaries. At one point I believe there were 300+ non-members in that building!!! That's unheard of! We had lots of guest speakers come in to give presentations and the missionaries were running various booths around the church and answering any questions. All in all it was a huge success. We now have a massive list of people that would like the missionaries to come to their homes and teach them and their families how to use the Church's ''Family Search'' website! What a perfect missionary opportunity. 

The Denmark mission is actually doing a huge Family History push right now due to the fact that our mission president believes it is the key to the heart of the family loving Danish people. And I'm glad it is because in the process I've learned tons of great things about my own ancestors, especially after my lovely Nana Bradshaw sent me tons of great stories about my Danish ones. Family History work really is exciting!! If you haven't been on recently, I would highly recommend it. 

Otherwise, we've got some new and exciting investigators to work with. Especially one named Mr.T from Cambodia! He married a young Danish lady just a few months ago and they moved over here to Århus! We met him one night at a stop light as we were SPRINTING home to make it home on time. We were waiting at the red light, wheezing and heaving, and laughing, he asked us who we were. We told him we don't have time right now, but if you give us your number we can tell you another time. He gave it to us!! AND we made it home on time with 30 seconds to spare!! He's awesome and doesn't have any religious background at all, so it's been fun just teaching him the fundamentals. He has already attended Football on Saturday and Church on Sunday and really enjoyed it, so we'll see where that goes.

I hope you all have a fantastic week!!! I love you each and every one!!

Ældste Bradshaw